i will gladly camp in a nice cool RV with cold drinks if i somehow am able to afford it.

edit: and i will run a gennie whenever i want

You can! I have always had all the amenities - fridge/freezer, A/C, hot shower, etc. RVs are the world's worst investment! They are expensive as hell new, but super cheap old!I paid less for my top of the line in it's day truck camper than most burners pay to rent something for the week.

But the generators... yep, the quiet Hondas were expensive. Even with those, and being camped at 2:45 & C, (loud zone) I still had a neighbor bitch about the generators! I was polite but basically refused to move or do a fucking thing because they were already there and he pitched his tent next to them. The solution was he moved and even parked a car in front of my trailer (with the Hondas on it). Like it mattered!! There was a guy with one of those shitty loud sets right out in the open 50 feet away! You couldn't even hear mine!

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

heh heh, I invested in a small solar panel, deep cycle battery, charge controller, and a little inverter. It played my little music well. I do wish I had thought to bring a single 15W electric lightbulb. Start with the hardware, the software comes (synapses grow) after. At this rate, my generator could be about twenty years out.

This thread has drifted off the to shit.. I have a generator to power the house in case of power failure.. I also have a small generator for burning man.. The one for the house.. You could build a battle ship baffle around it.. It would still rattle your teeth at ten feet.. The BM generator has a padded tote for a baffle and you can not hear it at ten foot..

Some camper buy the big cheap generator on the way out of town.. They get to BM and light the thing off.. It's so damn loud they don't know what to do.. So the generator is place on the other side of there car.. Right in the middle of your camp.. Now is the time ask the BM Rangers to intervene before you kill the bastard..

Do not (as I have"once") go to there camp and show them how to start a new generator..

p.s. Elliot was nice enough to let me plug into his power to charge my rides.. Thank you again Elliot..

Elorrum wrote:heh heh, I invested in a small solar panel, deep cycle battery, charge controller, and a little inverter. It played my little music well. I do wish I had thought to bring a single 15W electric lightbulb. Start with the hardware, the software comes (synapses grow) after. At this rate, my generator could be about twenty years out.

The solar panel is certainly quieter and more pleasant. Sadly, a solar panel bought only for camping trips is not any greener than the generator. Not that you said it was, but I often run into people who think of solar for camping as a "green" solution. Solar panels need to be grid-tied, all the time, to be green. A solar panel taken out of a grid-tie installation to go camping and put back into a grid-tie when done is green.

Elorrum wrote:heh heh, I invested in a small solar panel, deep cycle battery, charge controller, and a little inverter. It played my little music well. I do wish I had thought to bring a single 15W electric lightbulb. Start with the hardware, the software comes (synapses grow) after. At this rate, my generator could be about twenty years out.

The solar panel is certainly quieter and more pleasant. Sadly, a solar panel bought only for camping trips is not any greener than the generator. Not that you said it was, but I often run into people who think of solar for camping as a "green" solution. Solar panels need to be grid-tied, all the time, to be green. A solar panel taken out of a grid-tie installation to go camping and put back into a grid-tie when done is green.

It was really just a less expensive entry level price for me than a small generator. I only needed power for a light (which I forgot) and my music and USB chargeable items.

Figjam said a big battery would power the swamp cooler all week.. He was right and had plenty left over.. I picked up a reconditioned battery for $35.. I had gotten my kid a 75 watt inverter to charge her phone.. It has a USB port and cost $14.. This a lead acid 12 volt.. To charge just jumper cables from the van 10-12 min.

unjonharley wrote:Now is the time ask the BM Rangers to intervene before you kill the bastard..

This is key! Most of us don't have the talent, patience, or skills to deal with issues like this. That's what the Black Rock City Rangers are trained to do. If your initial discussion doesn't work, go get the Rangers...save your sanity. The Rangers document issues like this and if offending parties insist on continuing to be asshats, the Rangers can bring higher authority into the "discussion" and they w/b 86'd from the event.

Don't bore your friends with all your troubles. Tell your enemies instead, for they will delight in hearing about them.

Another thing is to get the smallest generator you can get!6000 watt should be able to power at least 4 campers. I run EVERYTHING at once with a little 1200 watt champion. For being $200 new It doesn't scream it purrs, it's no louder then a Eu2000 at full load. Or even better a little honda em600, It will do a bar fridge, lights, sound, and charge some flashlights. (Just turn on the stuff on thing at a time)

I had a similar experience last year, with some folks showing up across the street mid-week and setting their crappy generator on the street side of their RV. I walked over to them and explained that our entire camp is solar powered, just so that we don't have to listen to generators. I asked them to please put the generator inside their camp, so that they could learn to appreciate its various byproducts.

Thankfully, they complied with my request. I have no idea what would have happened if they didn't. It would not have been pretty.

There's a few places like Alternative Energy Zone and Hushville, and if that's what you want that's where you belong. Ironically, you are the problem. Go back and read my post at the beginning of this thread. Where do you think you are, Yellowstone?

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

I practice what I preach. In my first reply I related how someone fired up a big loud generator right out in the open, drowning out the quiet ones I spent the $$ for, and prompting my First Mate to ask me to go over and complain. I didn't, I explained to her that it kinda sucked but we were in Black Rock City, there is noise. I left them alone. One Eyed Dick stopped by late one night, in a van stuffed full of tanks and plumbing... He pulled up to my boat in front of camp and said "Did anyone here order some fire??"I instantly knew the correct answer was "YES!!!!", and holy shit, he blew a ball of fire that warmed up Pluto. A virgin camp mate actually complained the next morning, said it had scared him, he thought the boat blew up, etc. We had to explain a few facts of life for those who choose to inhabit Black Rock City!! In 2000, right next to me was a camp called Jonah & the Techno Whale ( with a dome set up to look like a whale ) and it played LOUD techno 24/7, frequently with no one even around. We just rolled with it, we didn't like it but we didn't bitch. Look, there's noise, there's loud music and parties, there are balls of fire and bright lights at night, there's dust; this ain't Disneyland!

I think the best thing you can do is bring a few sheets of plywood, 2x4s, screws, saws etc. Then if a neighbor's generator is bothering you, offer to build a baffle. They need the electricity but probably don't love listening to the thing either. That's the real burner solution, not crying about noise or threatening criminal action.

Last edited by Captain Goddammit on Tue May 13, 2014 7:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

GreyCoyote: "At this rate it wont be long before he is Admiral Fukkit."Delle: Singularly we may be dysfunctional misfits, but together we're magic.

+1 to that. Most of the time, on-playa, being neighborly and asking nicely will go a long way. Most burners would rather camp next door to people they get along with and maybe turn into best friends for life than have a Hatfield/McCoy relationship. The majority of people whose generators are offending aren't doing it intentionally, they just weren't thinking about the impact on the neighbors. Ask if it'd be possible to turn it, or maybe juggle things so a vehicle or some other form of block could be placed between the machine and the edge of camp.

From the planning standpoint, there's plenty you can do if you're bringing a generator. Whisper quiet models, while more expensive, are worth every penny. A baffle can be built pretty easily, and doesn't cost much. And where you place it can make a huge difference - turning it or putting a vehicle between the nearest camp can often eliminate any problem.

i brought ear plugs for sleeping , there was a boom boom all night from somewhere , so the ear plugs worked great.

“Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.” - Abraham Lincoln (from a letter written by Lincoln during his presidency to the head of the Hohner Harmonica Company in Germany)

Captain Goddammit wrote:I do think it's worth noting that your cool factor just went way up due to how well you've taken counterpoints about your topic!

If there's no decent resolution to such a situation in the future, I suppose you could always see how tolerant the neighbor is of your liberal use of a bullhorn! Assholes on bullhorns is another fact of life in BRC! "HEY, NICE GENERATOR! HOW MANY WATTS DOES IT PUT OUT? DID YOU GET A GOOD DEAL ON IT? I THOUGHT ABOUT GETTING ONE LIKE THAT! HOW LONG HAVE YOU HAD IT? WOULD YOU RECOMMEND THAT UNIT TO YOUR FRIENDS?""WHAT? YOU WERE SLEEPING? OH, SORRY, I WAS TRYING TO BUT COULDN'T!"

We were camped at 5:15 and H. A nice group of folks were next to us with a bar and a bus and an old RV. They had a crap loud ass gennie under the RV. What it was powering, I have no idea, but it ran every afternoon. They had it baffled so that the noise came straight to us. Nice. We had cars parked along the side that blocked most of the noise so whatever. Noise is gonna happen.

On Monday they started packing up and starting vehicles, the RV wouldn't start. Didn't start. It finally got towed off Tuesday morning.

Start-battery trickle-chargers are really cheap. If you have 120v ac, what is the excuse to not have one charging for a week?

A 25W panel in the vehicle window would do it quiet. What if a person were dry-camping by themselves, without BRC support? Starting your vehicle is almost as important as having water.